Historians have identified two dominant currents in the

[rihanna.hayat]

Hi Tim,

Please note, this question was already discussed in a thread, locked by you. I am re-posting it with the OA screenshot to give you confirmation of the correct answer as per Official Guide.

Also, if I have posted at a wrong place, please feel free to delete this post.

Historians have identified two dominant currents in the
Russian women's movement of the late tsarist period.
"Bourgeois" feminism, so called by its more radical
opponents, emphasized "individualist" feminist goals
such as access to education, career opportunities, and
legal equality. "Socialist" feminists, by contrast,
emphasized class, rather than gender, as the principal
source of women's inequality and oppression, and
socialist revolution, not legal reform, as the only road
to emancipation and equality.
However, despite antagonism between bourgeois
feminists and socialist feminists, the two movements
shared certain underlying beliefs. Both regarded paid
labor as the principal means by which women might
attain emancipation: participation in the workplace
and economic self-sufficiency, they believed, would
make women socially useful and therefore deserving
of equality with men. Both groups also recognized the
enormous difficulties women faced when they
combined paid labor with motherhood. In fact, at the
First All-Russian Women's Congress in 1908, most
participants advocated maternity insurance and paid
maternity leave, although the intense hostility between
some socialists and bourgeois feminists at the
Congress made it difficult for them to recognize these
areas of agreement. Finally, socialist feminists and
most bourgeois feminists concurred in subordinating
women's emancipation to what they considered the
more important goal of liberating the entire Russian
population from political oppression, economic
backwardness, and social injustice.

The passage is primarily concerned with
(A) identifying points of agreement between two
groups
(B) advocating one approach to social reform over
another
(C) contrasting two approaches to solving a political
problem
(D) arguing that the views espoused by one political
group were more radical than those espoused by
another group
(E) criticizing historians for overlooking similarities
between the views espoused by two superficially
dissimilar groups


The OA is (A). Here is the screenshot link:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/4/93389718.jpg/

Now my approach to the problem:
The author mentioned two things in the 1st paragraph : (i) there were two currents of women's movement (ii) the two types of movements were contrasting each other.
In 2nd paragraph, the author said that despite of opposing factors/methods, the two movements shared some beliefs and finally concurred on 'what they considered more imp. goal'

As per my understanding, I cannot find any tone such as that of 'advocating', 'arguing' or 'criticizing'. Hence (b), (d) and (e) are wrong.
Now 1st para - contrasting two approaches, so (c) should be correct and 2nd para - identifying similarities of the two, hence (a) should be correct.
I chose (a) on the basis of last statement "Finally socialists.....social injustice", since here finally the groups concur on something that they considered important.

Please explain if my approach to problem is incorrect.

[RonPurewal]

Now 1st para - contrasting two approaches, so (c) should be correct and 2nd para - identifying similarities of the two, hence (a) should be correct.

The passage contains exactly two sentences describing a contrast between the two groups; then there's "despite that..." and then the entire remainder of the passage is 100% dedicated to describing similarities between the two groups' worldviews. There's no question as to which of the two is the main idea and which isn't.